For the first half of the 20th century, the dream of harnessing the St. Lawrence River to the twin ends of large-vessel transport and hydroelectric generation must have seemed as timeless and enduring as the mighty waterway itself.

On both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, politicians had talked about building a navigable artery into the “heart of the continent,” where much of the population lived, for 50 years and more.

Presidents and prime ministers came and went. Engineering reports and feasibility studies piled up. Until finally an agreement was reached. And, for five years starting in 1954, construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project got done.

As the 150th anniversary of Confederation is marked this year, one of the achievements in which Canada can take pride is a project (now pretty much taken for granted) variously described over the years as the “8th wonder of the world,” “the greatest construction show on Earth,” and “a study in politics and diplomacy.”

If it was, famously, the longest-running unresolved issue in Canada-U.S. relations, it also remains the largest navigable inland waterway in the world, the largest frontier project jointly undertaken by two countries, and a heroically large infrastructure project.

As Carleton Mabee wrote in 1961 in his book The Seaway Story, conquering the shoals, currents, shallows and rapids meant expropriating land, “lifting bridges, moving houses, railways and factories out of the way; it meant building canals, dikes, dams and locks; it meant re-planning old towns and creating entirely new towns . . .”

The Welland Canal, a key part of the seaway.
(Peter Power)

From time beyond record, First Nations had used the St. Lawrence River as a transportation route. It was Jacques Cartier — calling it “the greatest river to have ever been seen: — who gave it its modern name in the mid-16th century.

Yet great as the river may have been, European settlers were attempting to bend it to their purposes pretty soon after arrival. In 1680, the superior of a Montreal seminary is reported to have begun trying to build a 1.5-metre-deep canal to bypass the Lachine Rapids.

By the middle of the 19th{+ }century, the addition of canals had created a navigable channel three metres deep from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Erie. By 1905, there was a channel almost five metres deep from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Lake Superior — about 3,700 kilometres inland.

Through all this, the St. Lawrence was both spiritually and materially epic in the Canadian imagination. One historian said that throughout the country’s history the river had “served as the major artery of commerce — the axis from which development began, and around which the national economy was organized.”

Near the turn of the 20th century, there arose visions on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border about joint construction of a deep waterway.

And for the next half-century these were fended off, as Canadian historian Daniel Macfarlane has put it, by bouts of “indecision, obfuscation and delay.”

One side or the other would be seized by bursts of enthusiasm. But — for reasons of Depression or war, unaffordable costs or jurisdictional disputes — periods of zeal were never in tandem.

The speed of progress, such as it was, suited no one quite as much as it did that paragon of caution, Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. When presented with a proposal from U.S. President Warren Harding in 1922 to get cracking on the St. Lawrence, he said to Parliament:

“The present is not an opportune time to consider the report that has been presented and the matter should be allowed to remain in abeyance.”

Time passed. The river flowed. There were threats by Canada, after the Second World War, showing new confidence, to go it alone.

Finally, in 1954, agreement was reached on a project with a pricetag of almost $500 million for about 300 kilometres of navigation works from Montreal to Lake Erie, and a total of more than $1 billion when the power development was included.

Work began promptly. More than 500 Canadian and American engineers directed construction by more than 20,000 workers of locks, digging of canals, building of bridges and new roads and railways.

Construction was completed, on schedule, in 1959 and the official opening on June 26 that year was presided over by the Queen and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.

The highway near the hamlet of Woodlands, which was submerged by the waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1958. Louis Helbig created a series of photographs called Sunken Villages of the foundations of buildings and old roads that are now submerged. (Louis Helbig)

About 20,000 people were on hand for the ceremony that hot summer day in the Montreal-area community of Saint-Lambert.

The Seaway ranked, Her Majesty said, “as one of the outstanding engineering accomplishments of modern times.”

Eisenhower nodded to the seaway’s long gestation and the persistent souls who “across the years pushed forward despite decades of disappointment and setbacks.” Most of all, he said, the project was a symbol to the world of the achievements possible when democratic nations work together for the common good.

In a letter a few days later to Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who also attended the official opening, Eisenhower said the project “cannot fail to have an enormous potential for the future prosperity of our two countries.”

But as with any such megaproject, not all consequences are positive.

On the American side, the project highlight was the massive Robert Moses-Robert H. Saunders Power Dam between Cornwall, Ont., and Massena, N.Y. Construction of that facility resulted in Lake St. Lawrence, which flooded what had once been farmers’ fields.

About 6,500 people, more than 500 homes, 65 kilometres of railway track and 56 kilometres of highway were relocated. Six villages and three hamlets in Ontario are known as the “Lost Villages.”

Over the seaway’s life, there have been economic and employment booms and slumps, with fluctuations in the grain trade and the North American manufacturing sector.

There has also been the unintended consequence of arrival via all that shipping traffic of invasive species that have wrought havoc on the Great Lakes.

Still, by the time of the Seaway’s 50th anniversary in 2009, the American Public Works Association has ranked it among the 10 most important publicly funded projects of the 20th century.

By the 21st century, with marketing the name of the game, the St. Lawrence Seaway had a thoroughly modern angle as the green alternative to rail and road.

And, naturally, it had acquired a brand:

“Hwy H2O.”

THE LOST VILLAGES

Little is as universally captivating as the notion of lost cities and civilizations. Atlantis. El Dorado. Easter Island. Angkor. As a poet said, the most haunting words are “what might have been.”

In eastern Ontario, the “Lost Villages” are named Mille Roches, Moulinette, Wales, Dickinson’s Landing, Farran’s Point, Aultsville, along with the hamlets of Maple Grove, Santa Cruz and Woodlands.

These places were not lost to war or plague or other of the apocalypses that periodically befall humankind.

They were disposed of by design when the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project took precedence over their claim on the landscape.

On July 1, 1958, the lost villages — some of them centuries old — disappeared under the waters of the new, man-made Lake St. Lawrence. Their 6,500 residents were displaced to new towns named Ingleside and Long Sault.

For years, the murky water hid the old roads, foundations and other structures of the Lost Villages. Ironically, the zebra mussels that came inland on the seagoing vessels the seaway was built to accommodate helped clear the water.

And from the sky, art photographer Louis Helbig spotted what remained. On his website are ghostly images of the villages.

“They lived and loved, worked and played, were born and buried; they were little different, in their time, from people in any other Canadian community,” Helbig has written.

“Save for the misfortune to be near the mighty Long Sault Rapids, a significant barrier between the ocean and the Great Lakes.”

A coffer-dam was exploded on what was then called Dominion Day, 1958. The water rose over three days and nights. And what hadn’t been dismantled and moved in advance was lost.